Torchlight creators Runic Games have found themselves in a public dispute with the creators of a Armed Heroes Online, an MMO for mobile platforms that’s currently available in the Canadian Apple App Store. In a July 13 forum thread about the game on Touch Arcade, an iOS-focused gaming site, users noticed similarities between footage of Armed Heroes Online and Torchlight.

Very soon, Runic President Travis Baldree entered the conversation. Baldree alleged that “All of the monster assets and every dungeon tileset, as well as voices, and most sound effects, are direct rips from Torchlight.” Baldree continues: “I didn’t see ANY monsters that weren’t ours.”

While PC Gamer cannot independently confirm the origin of the Armed Heroes Online game assets referenced, the evidence of plagiarism — a topic dear to our hearts — is significant based on what’s presented in the thread.

As these allegations were being made by forum members and Baldree, Armed Heroes Online’s creators made a statement in a separate thread. A poster, identifying herself as an EGLS (AHO’s developer) representative named Serena Zhang, denied any wrongdoing.

“We can hardly agree with Mr. Travis Baldree who judged that EGLS ‘wholesale stole most of the assets from Torchlight!’ only based on the similarity between several small monsters. The judgment is simply untenable.”

But then her statement takes a strangely defensive turn. Downplaying any similarities between AHO and Torchlight, she writes that Runic “ripped off” other games, including Diablo and Diablo II, and most curiously, Fate.

“In Fate, players are allowed to raise their own pets, cats or dogs, and equip them with 3 items. These pets can help players’ in-game characters fight, pick up and transport items. What is more awesome is you won’t lose them even if they run out of HP when they just wander around for a while and come back to fight for you later. If you feed them with fish, they can transform into various powerful monsters. In Torchlight, all the above elements are completely borrowed without any difference: cats and dogs, 3 available items, help in fight and pick up/transport items, feed them fish to transform them… Does everything sounds familiar? Then, does it mean that we can conclude that Torchlight blatantly ripped off Fate?”

The poster may be unaware that Travis Baldree designed Fate before coming to Runic.

Following that statement from EGLS, Baldree shared direct evidence of misuse of Torchlight’s assets: many sound file names from Torchlight—typos and all—are identical to Armed Heroes’. “The files named after our unique bosses and classes are particularly telling, as well as the ‘joke’ sound effect that Adam Perin our technical artist recorded for a rare sword,” Baldree tells PC Gamer. More visual evidence was presented by another forum member, seen below.

They didn't even try to hide how much they ripped off Torchlight, the fact that it looks like they just ripped the files directly from Torchlight is ridiculous and almost laughable, I lol'd when Baldree pointed out even Runic's spelling mistakes were intact on the file names. Hopefully this thing gets pulled from the app store.

“In Fate, players are allowed to raise their own pets, cats or dogs, and equip them with 3 items. These pets can help players’ in-game characters fight, pick up and transport items. What is more awesome is you won’t lose them even if they run out of HP when they just wander around for a while and come back to fight for you later. If you feed them with fish, they can transform into various powerful monsters. In Torchlight, all the above elements are completely borrowed without any difference: cats and dogs, 3 available items, help in fight and pick up/transport items, feed them fish to transform them… Does everything sounds familiar? Then, does it mean that we can conclude that Torchlight blatantly ripped off Fate?”

The poster may be unaware that Travis Baldree designed Fate before coming to Runic.

Shame this wasn't about a 14 year old illegally downloading the game. Then we could get a happy ending. You know. The kid's family could be sued into perpetual bankruptcy. But, sadly, in this unjust world, the company will get away with counterfeiting the game and no fucks will be given by the Chinese government, and life will continue.